Basically flawed; DVDs Basic Instinct 2 (18) VERDICT: ***** Hostel (18) VERDICT: ***** The Squid and the Whale (15) VERDICT: ***** Three Burials (15) VERDICT: ***** The Big White (15) VERDICT: ***** The Mistress of Spices (12) VERDICT: ***** The Dark (15) VERDICT: *****.

Byline: By Graham Young MAIL FILM EDITOR

FORMER Villa striker Stan Collymore never deserved to become a movie star in BASIC INSTINCT 2 (18, also to buy pounds 19.99).

But although it quickly sank in cinemas, many won't be able to resist seeing how Hollywood reinvented Stan the Man as a Premiership soccer star who has graphic sex with siren Sharon Stone in a ton-up car.

Luckily, he's soon dumped in the Thames, leaving Stone to reprise her role as the sexually voracious, best-selling bisexual crime novelist Catherine Tramell.

A hollow film which relies too heavily on lots of twists, kinky sex and nudity, the DVD extras include deleted scenes and an alternative ending.

FOR a truly grisly horror book into HOSTEL (pounds 19.99).

'Presented' by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Cabin Fever's Eli Roth, the film is full of gratuitous nudity and explicit tourist torture scenes. It's a genuine nightmare - for the real-life local Slovakian tourist information board!

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (pounds 19.99) is only 77 minutes long, but it's also a top drama.

Jeff Daniels is on career-best form as a novelist with writer's block and two sons caught up in the break-up of his marriage.

Basing the film on his own childhood experiences, little known director Noah Baumbach's original screenplay was Oscar-nominated.

THREE BURIALS (15) is the directorial debut of Men in Black star Tommy Lee Jones.

The craggy-faced actor also stars as ranch foreman Pete Perkins who forces psychotic border patrolman Mike Norton (Barry Pepper) to take the exhumed body of victim Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cesar Cedillo) to a more suitable burial site. Engagingly different.

ROBIN Williams and Holly Hunter star in a watchable Alaskan comedy called THE BIG WHITE (pounds 17.99).

She's got Tourettes, he's foolishly trying to pass off the body of a dead man as his long lost bro.

But then Raymond (Woody Harrelson) turns up on the doorstep for real ...

Good fun, with the DVD extras including a director commentary.

NOT dissimilar to Johnny Depp's Chocolat, the clash between modern America and traditional India is a good subject matter worth exploring in MISTRESS OF SPICES (pounds 19.99).

But the colourful film is overnarrated and never overcomes its low budget, limited script or lack of pace from director Paul Mayeda Burges.

Shot mostly in the Isle of Man ... doubling up as San Francisco!

BASED on Simon Maginn's novel, THE DARK (pounds 19.99) sees James (Sean Bean) entertaining daughter Sarah, visiting from New York with his separated wife Adele (Maria Bello).

Set on the Welsh coastline, the ill-explained, woolly story involves lots of surprisingly mute sheep and mysterious deaths haunting Adele.

Oh, please - deliver us from this evil!

CAPTION(S):

DEADLY EMBRACE... siren Sharon Stone stars in Basic Instinct 2.